Identify the budget strategies Weinberger used. Is there a common logic running through them, or is each independent of the others? Would the strategies he used be applicable to the post–Cold War environment? Would the current secretary of defense be able to learn anything by reviewing Weinberger’s script? How has the war on terrorism changed the budget environment?

Identify the budget strategies Weinberger used. Is there a common logic running through them, or is each independent of the others?
Would the strategies he used be applicable to the post–Cold War environment? Would the current secretary of defense be able to learn

anything by reviewing Weinberger’s script? How has the war on terrorism changed the budget environment?
To what extent would these strategies be transferable outside the national defense budget?
Use the historical statistics section of the most recent federal budget to trace the pattern of defense outlays and budget authority from

1980 through 1989. What pattern do you identify? Compare the patterns there with comparable data for 2000 to the present.

Weinberger Finds His Well-Worn Strategies Always Succeed in Blunting Defense Budget

By Tim Carrington

Washington—Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger has privately referred to his campaign for a bigger defense budget as Kabuki, a highly ritualized

Japanese art form in which all movements are tightly choreographed in advance. Despite the furor surrounding the Reagan administration’s push to

add $29 billion to the military budget for the next fiscal year, many aspects of the contest seem to follow a set script. And after four years

in the fray, the tireless Mr. Weinberger is nothing if not well-rehearsed. Since President Reagan launched his military buildup, Congress has

provided the Pentagon with about 95 percent of the spendingauthority it has sought. A look at the defense budget debate over the past four years

bears out Mr. Weinberger’s observations that it’s less a political brawl than one of Washington’s most stylized dramas. And the past could well

foreshadow what happens this year.

1982

In March 1981, Congress granted the Pentagon a startling 20 percent increase, bringing its budget for fiscal 1982 to $216.5 billion, just below

the $222 billion the administration sought. However, five months later, Mr. Weinberger faced dissent from within the Reagan administration.

David Stockman, director of the Office of Management and Budget, proposed rescinding part of that increase and scaling back the projected

military expansion for future years. The budget chief had just learned that the fiscal 1982 federal budget deficit was likely to rise to $62.6

billion, small in relation to today’s deficits of more than $200 billion, but for that time a record. Mr. Stockman recognized that Mr. Reagan’s

goal of showing a balanced budget by 1984 was in jeopardy, and he considered the defense buildup part of the program. In staving off Mr.

Stockman’s assault on the planned buildup, Mr. Weinberger turned to a tactic for which he has since become famous, the chart and easel. The

defense secretary’s charts, presented in a meeting with the president, showed large soldiers bearing large weapons, which were labeled “Reagan

budget.” They towered above small soldiers with small weapons labeled “OMB budget.” President Reagan went along with the “Reagan budget.”

1983